So part of the reason the city went with the anti-net neutral provider CenturyLink instead of looking into better, complete, ethical solutions has to do with the belief they had that people wanted another traditional style Cable TV provider. Here's why that's crazy. Just like with oil, TV is provided by a handful of content providers that set the overall price for it. So sure you may go to a Shell one day and pay 5 cents less than a Mobil, and vice versa, but in general the overall price of oil is simply too high and no real significant competition takes place, especially when you factor the subsidies for it into the cost. The same is true of traditional TV, just think of Comcast like Shell and CenturyLink like Mobil. The solution, of course, comes from new technology. With a truly good, low-cost, broadband connection you can get TV for free via services like PlutoTV which runs on just about everything. Plus, the TV market has simply, and significantly changed. Some of the best new content is coming out directly via services like Amazon Video and Netflix who are producing their own series. You probably already pay for these services anyway. Amazon has even started to carry Thursday Night Football and Sling has a sports package. The age of traditional TV is over. You need good Net-Neutral Broadband, from many providers that actually compete with each other, live in, and care about your community. Not what we have now. In fact, CenturyLink has said that if they don't get 20% of the suscribers in Bellingham in 5 years they'll pull out, they also said they won't even give us a local office unless they get 30% (a higher percentage than Cocmast) and they confirmed with the city's IT director that they have no interest in coming out into the county with new services. Google charges $100 a month for TV with 1 Gig Fiber Based broadband in Kansas City, btw. As an aside, I am reminded about the importance of infrastructure yet again this morning. I am sitting here after yet another power outage. I live in an annex of the city, in fact so close to the city that we were almost incorporated into it a few years ago and their public fiber runs up to one street over from mine, yet we lose power all of the time. We are in a high wind area and have even had poorly maintained poles snap. I've asked PSE why they don't go underground and can not get a response from them. The only response I've received in regard to PSE was to be threatened by the City's Public Works director Ted Carlson, on PSE's behalf. We lose power so often that it effects our business as I'm sure it does every business in Bellingham, yet our leaders just keep telling us that if we don't like it we can spend $14,000 or more on solar panels, and in general not to bother them as they continue to raise our taxes and take in more and more money all of the time. Not to mention the frivolous expenditures they make on other items. So back to fiber and broadband in general. Not having broadband effects us in the same way. Not having good broadband makes it hard to expand. Having monopolies, or virtual monopolies like we do, gives the companies no incentive to do a better job. We can't move forward with infrastructure like this.